A Non-profit organization dedicated to advancing American Indian Higher Education, seeks a Director of AIHEC NARCH Research with 5+ years of experience. Successful candidate should be able to work independently in a fast paced environment, be accurate, well organized and possess excellent computer, spreadsheet and communication skills.

The Director of AIHEC NARCH Research will assume a leadership role in the development and implementation of a distributed behavioral health research program involving the nations’ 37 Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) and will develop other research-related projects that build on the NARCH project. The Director will provide day-to-day management of the AIHEC NARCH project and engage in regular planning and project coordination activities with AIHEC staff, co-principal investigators, TCU research coordinators, and other partnering organizations and stakeholders. A priority for this position will be to establish a sustained program that builds upon the success of
the AIHEC NARCH project, providing the TCUs research, training and technical support resources as they develop research and education programs necessary to address critical issues impacting the health and wellness of American Indians.

This position calls for a strategic, energetic, and creative director, deeply knowledgeable of
behavioral health and American Indian issues, and familiar with best practices associated with community-based research and program implementation in American Indian/Alaska Native communities.

The Director must be a skillful manager adept at cross-functional integration and program growth.

The Director must be able to work with diverse stakeholders and have the capacity to create and nurture effective partnerships. With a personal style that is professional, polished, and engaging, the Director of AIHEC NARCH Research will engender trust, foster a collegial environment, and bring out the best in TCU project partners and
colleagues.

A number of recent studies and reports have examined the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP) and its impact on students of color. Few, if any, of these documents have focused on the troubling and undeniable effects of the pipeline on American Indian students. Nationally, 22% of all American Indian students receive disciplinary action at school, compared to 14.1% of all white students.1 In Utah, these students are almost four times (3.8) more likely to receive a school disciplinary action compared to their white counterparts.

One day in 2014, in Utah’s San Juan School District, two middle school boys went looking for their teacher. The district serves the largest number of Native American students in the state and both boys identified as such. In pursuit of their teacher, they checked out the teachers’ lounge, and, in that room full of adult secrets, they began to poke around. In the fridge they found a couple bottles of Dr. Pepper. They grabbed them and drank them.

Unsurprisingly, they were caught.

But what might have been dismissed as a youthful infraction instead took a serious turn: both boys were referred to law enforcement for theft.

Their story, which comes from a report released by the University of Utah Friday, is not unusual. The study, conducted by researchers at the university’s S.J. Quinney College of Law Public Policy Clinic, found that Native American students in Utah are disciplined far more harshly than their peers. They’re almost eight times more likely to be referred to law enforcement and six times more likely to be arrested than white students, far out of proportion to the size of the population.

The result is a phenomenon known in education circles as the “school-to-prison pipeline,” whereby zero tolerance disciplinary policies that disproportionately target minority students funnel them out of school and into juvenile justice programs.

“A lot of these policies have the best intentions,” Vanessa Walsh, the report’s primary author, said. “We have to keep our schools safe. But it’s having consequences that I don’t think anyone anticipated.”

The next stop for many students is often the adult prison system, which can have devastating impacts on already-vulnerable youth and their communities, she said. (In the case of the soda-drinking boys, the school district doesn’t track what happens once students are handed to police, but they could have been charged with a crime, arrested, fined or forced to appear in court.)

The School demonstrated that the graduation ceremony is a formal ceremony and that the unity of the graduating class as a whole is fostered by the uniformity of the caps which are the most prominently visible part of the graduation regalia viewed by the audience to the graduation. Prohibiting decoration of any graduation cap by any student for any purpose serves these legitimate interests. Based on the application of these established principles the undersigned finds that Plaintiff has not demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on her First Amendment Free Exercise of Religion claim.